Debra Messing

A vivacious performer with a knack for verbal and physical comedy, actress Debra Messing was a Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress who dominated the sitcom scene for eight years as love...
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Former Will & Grace actor Eric Mccormack is set to reunite with his co-star Debra Messing on her police drama The Mysteries Of Laura. The actors played best friends on the Emmy-winning comedy, and nine years after wrapping the sitcom, the two will team up once again, this time as former lovers.
According to Deadline.com, McCormack will guest star as Messing's former fiance who is suspected of killing his ex-wife, and Messing's detective character Laura Diamond will lead the homicide investigation.
It will mark the first time McCormack and Messing have shared the screen since Will & Grace ended its eight-season run in 2006.

Former Will & Grace star Sean Hayes has become engaged to his boyfriend Scott Icenogle. The 44-year-old actor and comedian has dated the music producer and composer for over seven years.
There are no firm wedding plans just yet but Hayes' representative has confirmed the news, which comes hours after it was announced his Will & Grace co-star Debra Messing had split from her boyfriend of over two years, Will Chase.

Actress Debra Messing and her boyfriend Will Chase have ended their romance. The former Will & Grace star hooked up with the actor while they were castmates on musical drama series Smash and the 40-somethings found love in late 2011.
However, the pair has since called time on its romance.
A representative for Messing confirms, "Debra Messing and Will Chase have ended their two-and-a-half year relationship, but remain close friends."
The actress was previously married to writer/producer Daniel Zelman.

Actress Debra Messing knits her own sweaters because of her allergies. The former Will & Grace star has spent years struggling with sensitive skin, and she can't wear garments made of wool or cashmere without breaking out in a rash, so she makes her own using man-made fibres.
She tells the New York Post, "I knit. If I didn't make sweaters I'd go nuts. I'm allergic to wool, cashmere and angora, so I do acrylic."

Mariah Carey leads a host of stars who have thrown their support behind a gay rights charity's annual anti-bullying day.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's (GLAAD) Spirit Day encourages supporters to wear purple to raise awareness about homophobic bullying in youth. Carey backed the drive on Twitter, writing:
"'Dreams are hard to follow, but don't let anyone tear them away'. Stand against bullying! #SpiritDay".
Debra Messing, Don Cheadle, Ricky Martin and LeAnn Rimes have also posted messages on the microblogging site to show their support for Spirit Day on Thursday (16Oct14). Transgender Orange is the New Black star, Laverne Cox, also agreed to turn on purple lights at the Empire State Building in New York on Spirit Day.

Zoe Saldana, America Ferrera, Eva Longoria and Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson are among the famous friends who have paid tribute to actress Elizabeth Pena following her death this week (beg13Oct14). The 55 year old passed away at a hospital in Los Angeles on Tuesday (14Oct14), and the tragedy has prompted an outpouring of grief among the acting community.
Pena played Sofia Vergara's onscreen mother in hit U.S. TV show Modern Family, and her co-star Ferguson mourned her loss in a post on Twitter.com, writing, "The entire cast and crew are very sad to say goodbye to one of our Modern Family members. RIP to the beautiful & talented #ElizabethPena."
Star Trek actress Saldana writes, "My heart is broken!!! My prayers are with you and your family. We will miss you #ElizabethPena."
Ugly Betty star Ferrera adds, "Heartbroken to hear the news of Elizabeth Pena's death. She was such a light. So glad I knew her. So sad she's gone," while actress Debra Messing offers, "I am stunned and heartbroken, just found out about the passing of my friend Elizabeth Pena. She was such a life force it's hard to believe."
Eva Longoria, who admits she is a big of Pena's work, writes, "RIP Elizabeth Pena. I was a fan since the days of I Married Dora & loved her in Jacob's Ladder & more recently Matador/Modern Family," and Longoria's former desperate Housewives co-star Dana Delany adds, "Aw...damn. Elizabeth Pena was a wonderful actress and even lovelier person. My thoughts are with her family."
Other tributes have come in from Gilles Marini, George Lopez , Lou Diamond Phillips, Robert Rodriguez, Frances Fish, Martha Plimpton and John Leguizamo.

Actress Debra Messing is such a fan of the medication she's taking to control her many allergies she has become a spokeswoman for the company behind the "miracle". The former Will & Grace star has been battling allergies all her life and nothing seemed to work until she tried Zyrtec a couple of years ago.
She says, "It was a revelation for me. I found something that I could take in the morning and I was set for 24 hours and I could go out in the park and play soccer with my son and not worry about it.
"I could shoot (new TV show) The Mysteries of Laura out in Central Park after the rain and not worry about my eyes turning bright red and sounding like (throaty actress) Brenda Vaccaro because of having an allergic reaction."
The medication has also solved Messing's snoring problem.

Legendary comedienne Lucille Ball's daughter has assured actress Debra Messing that no biopic about her mum will ever be made unless she's onboard to play the I Love Lucy icon. The former Will & Grace star is a huge fan of Ball's and was blown away when her idol's daughter tracked her down at a party recently and told her she wouldn't want anyone else to play her mum.
Messing says, "She came up to me and said, 'I've always said that if they ever did a movie about my mother's life that you would be the person that I would want to play the part', and I started to cry. It was a pretty profound and wonderful moment for me. It was a very generous thing to say."
However, the actress feels sure the Lucille movie will never happen anyway, adding, "No one should touch that."

WENN/Daniel Deme
Three upcoming TV series are hitting the streets of New York City today. Here's a closer look what you can expect from each show and where you can find them filming.
Daredevil
Marvel recently announced Daredevil will premiere on Netflix in May 2015, forcing fans to wait longer than they had anticipated to check it out.
The 13-episode series will follow the Marvel superhero Daredevil, a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock who fights for justice in the courtroom by day before transforming into a vigilante crimefighter by night. The new adaptation stars Charlie Cox as Daredevil, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, and Rosario Dawson in an undisclosed role.
You can catch Daredevil filming at Murray and Church St in NYC right now.
The Mysteries of Laura
Debra Messing is back in NYC to star in this NBC series about a homicide detective who has to balance the pressures of work with the pressures of raising rambunctious twin boys as a single mom.
Today, The Mysteries of Laura is filming at 37th St and 5th Ave in New York.
Madam Secretary
This new CBS series stars Tea Leoni as the Secretary of State who is determined to get thing done, even if it means breaking a few rules. Like The Mysteries of Laura, the series also follows her character home where she has to contend with her husband and two teenage children.
Madam Secretary is filming at E 52nd and 3rd Ave in Manhattan today.
Check out more filming locations in NYC and around the country in my Daily Filming Locations.

NBC Universal Media
Next fall, NBC will air The Biggest Loser to its Thursday night lineup, giving it the 8 PM slot. Once football season ends, the network will put its only true hit from this season, The Blacklist, at the 9 PM slot on Thursday. Why is any of that news? Because it means that for one of the few times since 1983, NBC will not air a block of sitcoms during the 8 - 10 PM timeslots.
NBC's Thursday nights has been the home to some of the biggest hits and most influential sitcoms in history, and while the network's programming strategy might make business sense it's hard not to feel a little sad at the end of what became one of the medium's few constants.
The Beginning
The Peacock first experimented with the idea of grouping sitcoms on Thursday during the 1983 - 84 season with a rotation of shows that included fare like Gimme a Break and We Got It Made… but it also included a pair of building blocks that would provide the basis for what was to come.
The following season in 1984, NBC debuted its first classic lineup on Thursdays with holdovers Cheers and Family Ties, paired with The Cosby Show and Night Court. The formula of two smart family sitcoms during the 8 - 9 PM hour and then two slightly more adult oriented sitcoms between 9 - 10 PM wasn't new — CBS did the same thing throughout much of the '70s — but the quality of the four shows was so good that it was hard for the grouping not to standout.
NBC's success on Thursdays — particularly with The Cosby Show, which at its peak was averaging nearly 30 million viewers a week — propelled the network to its first standalone win in the season ratings since Nielsen started keeping track in 1960.Cheers and The Cosby Show anchored the night for the rest of the decade until a little show about nothing came along to keep the ball rolling.
In its early days, Seinfeld bounced around the NBC schedule in search of a home, sometimes airing after Cheers. When the Ted Danson sitcom finally ended in 1993, however, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David's creation was ready to take over.
Seinfeld and Friends
Seinfeld, Mad About You, and starting in 1994, Friends became "Must See TV." For most of the next decade, Friends and Seinfeld were such strong ratings winners that they could carry a variety of weaker shows (Caroline in the City, Suddenly Susan, Veronica's Closet, etc.) that followed them. The pair of New York-based sitcoms became so iconic that Friends generated a fashion sensation as women rushed to have their hair styled like Rachel and Seinfeld fans quoted the show so much that phrases like "Master of your domain" and "No soup for you!" became part of the cultural lexicon.
When Seinfeld called it quits, the Cheers spinoff Frasier moved back to Thursday to stabilize the night for a couple of seasons until suitable replacement could be found. NBC found that replacement when it turned to a show about a group of friends far different from Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry and company: as Friends started to wind-down, the night became the domain of Will &amp; Grace. The sitcom about a gay man and his female best friend (Eric McCormack and Debra Messing), along with their two flakey cohorts (Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally), provided the network with another hit to build around.
Beginning of the End
When Friends came to a close, NBC's Thursday lineup went through a period of flux. The first signs of trouble began when Scrubs had difficulty finding a larger audience, despite being well received by critics. With ratings dropping, The Apprentice spent time in the 9 PM Thursday slot, as did Deal or No Deal.
The comedy lineup reemerged, however, in 2007 when Tina Fey's 30 Rock joined The Office, My Name Is Earl and Scrubs to form one more stellar block of sitcoms. By 2009, Community and Parks and Recreation had joined The Office and 30 Rock, but as smartly written as the group was, ratings never quite rebounded fully.
By this past season, when only Community and Parks remained and were grouped with the now canceled Welcome to the Family, Sean Saves the World, and The Michael J. Fox Show, the writing was on the wall. With not much more than The Big Bang Theory, CBS easily defeated NBC's offerings. With CBS' announcement that they would air NFL games on Thursdays in the fall, it became clear that NBC was going to have to counterprogram to keep from being trampled.
At some point, NBC lost its touch and patience for building sitcoms like Cheers, Seinfeld, and The Office... none of which was an immediate ratings success. That's too bad, but instead of lamenting the network's inability to come up with suitable sitcoms, it's better to sit back and marvel at the decades of comedy success that NBC managed to pull off. It was a heck of a run while it lasted.
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Starred with Dermot Mulroney in the romantic comedy "The Wedding Date"

Cast as Ben Stiller's cheating wife in "Along Came Polly"

Raised in East Greenwich, RI

Featured in Diane English's female ensemble "The Women," a remake of the 1936 play by Clare Boothe Luce

Starred as Stacey Colbert, a liberal journalist who enters into a marriage of convenience on the Fox sitcom "Ned and Stacey"

Made a guest appearance as Jerry's unavailable crush on an episode of "Seinfeld" (NBC)

Landed recurring role of scheming Dana Abandando on "NYPD Blue" (ABC)

Played Molly Kagan, the ex-wife of a Hollywood studio executive in the USA Network miniseries "The Starter Wife"; earned Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actress

Summary

A vivacious performer with a knack for verbal and physical comedy, actress Debra Messing was a Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress who dominated the sitcom scene for eight years as lovelorn interior designer Grace Adler on "Will and Grace" (ABC, 1998-2006). It was during this masterful run as the ditzy Adler that Messing received the ultimate compliment for any comedienne, an oft-cited comparison to Lucille Ball. During and after the show's run, Messing found time to make her mark in feature films like "Hollywood Ending" (2002), "Along Came Polly" (2004) and "The Wedding Date" (2005), while even voicing characters in animated films like "Garfield: The Movie" (2004) and "Open Season" (2006). She earned considerable acclaim as a spurned wife and mother on the popular summer miniseries, "The Starter Wife" (USA Network, 2007), which earned her more awards recognition. Though the series based on "The Starter Wife" failed to catch on with audiences in 2008, Messing returned to the fore with a leading role on the popular musical drama "Smash" (NBC, 2012-13). Regardless of the project, the red-haired beauty always delivered a quality performance that more often than not brought her both critical and commercial success.

Met as students at NYU; Began dating in 1992; Married on Sept. 3, 2000; Couple announced separation in December 2011; Messing filed for divorce in June 2012

Roman Zelman

Son

Born April 7, 2004; father, Daniel Zelman

Education

Name

Brandeis University

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art

New York University

Notes

According to Messing, "Ned & Stacey" executive producer Michael J. Wiethorn told her: "You are totally wrong for this. You're too wholesome. [Stacey's] this neurotic Jew from New York." To which Messing replied: "Hello, hello, hello! Neurotic Jew from New York sitting right here! Just give me a shot. Let me show you what I think you want." – Messing to Venice, April 1997

"My mom's philosophy has always been just do what makes you happy, and when it doesn't make you happy anymore, you don't do it anymore. Hence her careers." – Messing quoted in Us, January 1999